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The Madmones, who are husband and wife, run Whole Spice, a wholesale and retail purveyor of seasonings from around the globe. At their Petaluma warehouse, they grind whole spices to order and create blends for restaurants such as San Francisco's Aziza and Napa's Ubuntu and package private-label seasonings for Williams-Sonoma. Their shop in Napa's Oxbow Public Market caters to the Wine Country's adventurous home cooks. With an inventory that includes rarely seen blends like vadouvan and Egyptian mecalef, they are rapidly expanding the Bay Area's spice vocabulary.

"Everything we have - the kids' lunch boxes, our car, our clothes - is contaminated with spice," admits Shuli, who began the business a decade ago. "People tend to sneeze around me."

An ideal combination

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Shuli grew up in a haze of scent, the son of paprika growers and spice merchants in Israel. His parents, born in Yemen, helped establish an Israeli moshav - a cooperative agricultural settlement. That's where they grew sweet peppers for paprika, and later opened a spice shop to supply the immigrant Moroccan, Indian, Russian and Ethiopian Jews who had settled in the area. Shuli worked in the shop from an early age, helping grind and blend the wares.

Twenty years ago, he followed an American girlfriend to Marin County. The relationship soured, but he stayed, eventually opening a landscaping business. He and Ronit, an Israeli of Moroccan heritage, met more than a decade ago, in the early stages of Whole Spice. She was working as an au pair in Fairfax and had the marketing instincts he lacked.

"She's a go-getter kind of woman, and she thought, 'Why is he not doing this, or that?' " Shuli recalls. "She made it take off."

Ronit signed them up for stalls at Bay Area farmers' markets, where the couple learned more about how Americans cook. They discovered that their packages were far too big - few Americans use spices as lavishly as Shuli's and Ronit's mothers do - and that customers wanted ready-made blends.

"We didn't understand that in the beginning," Ronit says, "because back home they don't use blends. My mom and his mom would just put all the spices out on the counter and throw them in in the proportion they liked." The couple also knew little about American regional cooking and had no clue how to fill requests for items like jerk seasoning or Cajun spice rub.

But they read, researched and sought input from experts and natives. From a farmers' market customer, a former soldier who had done a long tour in Afghanistan, they learned how to blend black pepper, cumin, turmeric, cardamom and coriander for a savory Afghan-style meat rub. An elderly Egyptian woman who thought their mecalef - a fragrant blend of sweet spices and dried rosebuds - wasn't right gave them her recipe, which they now use instead.

Today they purchase spices from 60 to 70 suppliers, including specialists who may sell only one item. Ronit creates some of the blends, Shuli devises others, but the final recipe requires mutual consent.

"If one of us objects, it means we can do better," Shuli says.

Influence of world events

Demand can spike when a TV chef or an acclaimed restaurant popularizes a seasoning, as Ubuntu did for vadouvan, an Indian-inspired blend that includes dried shallots, fenugreek and cumin. The Madmones, who have three young sons and a budget that rarely permits fine dining, went with friends to Ubuntu, ordered the signature cauliflower with vadouvan, and announced to their tablemates, "Nobody touch it. This is for us."

After scrutinizing the seasoning, they created their own version and "sold a ton of it," Shuli says.

While chef whims can put a spice in the spotlight, world events and natural disasters can quickly push it off the stage.

A single storm in Guatemala can ruin a large share of the global cardamom crop, sending prices soaring overnight. Several years ago, bad weather in Madagascar caused vanilla bean prices to spike from $20 to $400 a pound. The Madmones' supply of a fiercely hot Indian chile dried up when the Indian government decided to use the capsicum in tear gas.

"We always know something has happened when the phone starts ringing and it's the big companies wanting to buy whatever stock we have," Shuli says. "The market can flip in a day."

At home, Shuli commands the kitchen, and his multicourse Friday night dinners routinely draw crowds. "For Shabbat, you have to treat yourself like a king," says the merchant, a trim, olive-skinned man with dimples and a nearly perpetual grin. Shuli engages strangers easily, and anyone interesting who crosses his path during the week will probably get a Friday-night invitation.

"Shuli will say, 'You won't believe the great guy I met at the fish market today,' and he'll invite him, his wife and three kids for dinner," Ronit says. "One time we had the UPS guy and the FedEx guy."

Sherry Stolar, a wine marketer in Napa, recently attended her second Sabbath dinner at the Madmones'.

"The day I met him, he invited me to dinner," recalls Stolar, who first encountered Shuli in his Napa shop. She was preparing dinner for her boyfriend that night and had picked up some groceries at the neighboring produce market. When she showed the spice merchant her purchases and asked his advice about the meal, he concocted some custom spice blends for her on the spot. Then he learned she was Jewish, had visited Israel, and had no plans for the upcoming Sabbath.

Relinquishing the fish

Stolar brought her boyfriend, Napa winemaker Ryan Moreland, to the second dinner. Longtime friends of the Madmones from San Francisco showed up, too, with their three youngsters.

Ronit made couscous topped with yogurt for the kids while Shuli, oblivious to the shrieks of the young playmates all around him, made Yemeni-style flatbread with flax seeds and nigella seeds, roasted eggplant salad with tahini, fattoush (a chopped vegetable salad) seasoned with sumac and za'atar, a dried fava bean puree seasoned with a Yemeni spice mixture called hawaj, and Persian rice pilaf with dried dill and a potato crust.

A self-confident cook with a competitive streak, Shuli did eventually relinquish one part of the menu.

"I have come to the conclusion that you will do a better job on the fish," he announced to his wife, who did not protest. Her Moroccan-style fish, a popular Sabbath recipe in Israel involving sweet peppers, cilantro and harissa, was a highlight of the meal.

"This is what pisses me off," says Shuli, watching Ronit stir tomato paste into the skillet. "By my theory, you should not use tomato paste, yet her fish is better."

'Spices make us feel at home'

Adults and youngsters squeezed around the Madmones' extended dining table for a meal that began with Hebrew songs and the ritual blessing of the bread and the wine. This hospitable couple could probably create a community around any enterprise, but their Napa spice shop seems to prompt strangers to let down their guard. He and Ronit have puzzled over it.

"Spices make us feel at home," Shuli theorizes. "You never forget a smell. In the store sometimes, customers tell us pretty intimate stories, and I think, 'Why are you telling me that?' "

Anecdotal evidence abounds that spices can heal wounds (Shuli swears by turmeric), cure ailments and invigorate one's love life. But as the Madmones are discovering, spices have a rarely mentioned magnetism - a power to stir emotions and bridge differences. The culinary value of spices is beyond dispute, but their other merits await more research.

Moroccan-style Fish With Harissa & Sweet Peppers

Serves 6

This specialty of Moroccan Jews is a popular Friday-night dish throughout Israel, says Ronit Madmone, an Israeli of Moroccan heritage. You can substitute tuna steaks, or use the same sauce with meatballs.

6 skinless thick fish fillets, such as halibut or salmon, 5 to 6 ounces each

Heat the olive oil in a 12-inch skillet over moderate heat. Add the garlic and saute until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the harissa and the tomato paste, stirring for about 1 minute to bring out the flavor.

Add the whole chiles (no need to remove stems or seeds), sliced bell peppers, cilantro and water. Stir well, then season with salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer, cover and adjust the heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Cook until the sauce thickens and the peppers are tender, about 20 minutes. Add more water if necessary, but keep the sauce on the thick side.

Add the fish fillets to the skillet and spoon some of the sauce over them. Cook, uncovered, basting occasionally with sauce, until the fish just flakes when probed with a fork, about 15 minutes. If the sauce is reducing too much before the fish is done, cover the skillet for the final few minutes to complete the cooking.

Transfer the fillets to individual plates, spooning some of the sauce and peppers over them. Leave the whole chiles behind.

Note: The harissa used in this recipe is a blend of dried spices, available from Whole Spice and other spice merchants. If you use the moist harissa paste sold in tubes, you may need to adjust the amount.

Wine pairing: The bell peppers add sweetness to this dish, which has less chile heat than you'd expect. Try a low-tannin, lower-alcohol red Rhone blend.

Shuli's Whole-Wheat Flatbread With Nigella Seeds

Makes 6 flatbreads

In Yemen, where Shuli Madmone's parents were raised, this flatbread would be baked on the sides of an outdoor oven resembling an Indian tandoor. The recipe can be doubled.

2 cups warm water

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

4 cups whole-wheat flour

1/4 cup flax seed

2 teaspoons sea salt or kosher salt

1 tablespoon nigella seeds

Instructions: Put the water in a medium bowl, and sprinkle the yeast over the water, stirring with a fork to dissolve. Let stand 10 minutes.

Stir in half the flour, the flax seed and the salt, then stir in the remaining flour and mix well. The dough will be too sticky to knead. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about 1 1/2 hours, depending on how warm your kitchen is.

Stir it down, re-cover and let rise until doubled again, about 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 550° or to its highest setting. Place a rack in the bottom of the oven and another rack in the top third. Line two rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.

With oiled or moistened hands, take a clump of dough about the size of a tennis ball (one-sixth of the dough, weighing just under 6 ounces), and let it drop from your hands onto one of the lined baking sheets. Put 3 dough mounds on each sheet, spacing them evenly. Oil or moisten your hand again and flatten each mound until it's about 1/4-inch thick, roughly 7 to 8 inches long and 4 to 5 inches wide. The precise shape is not important. Scatter nigella seeds over the surface, using about 1/2 teaspoon per bread. Press the seeds in place lightly with your fingertips.

Bake until the bread is browned and firm, about 12 minutes, shifting the position of the baking sheets halfway through. The bread should sound somewhat hollow when rapped with a spoon or your knuckles. Let breads cool on a rack for at least 15 minutes.

Egyptian-Style Braised Chicken

Serves 2 to 4

This recipe uses mecalef, a fragrant Egyptian spice blend that includes black pepper, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom and rosebuds. It is available from Whole Spice ( www.wholespice.com). Serve this with rice.

4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs

-- Sea salt to taste

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon unsalted butter

1 medium yellow onion, minced (about 1 cup)

1/2 teaspoon mecalef

1 medium tomato, peeled and finely diced

2 bay leaves

1/4 cup water

Instructions: Season the chicken all over with salt and set aside. In a 10-inch skillet over moderate heat, warm the olive oil with the butter. Add the onion and saute until soft, about 10 minutes. Add the mecalef and saute for 2 to 3 minutes to remove the raw flavor. Add the tomato and bay leaves and cook, stirring, until the tomato collapses into a sauce.

Add the chicken thighs to the skillet, skin side down. Add the water, cover and adjust the heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Cook, basting occasionally with pan juices, for 30 minutes. Turn the thighs with tongs, re-cover, and continue cooking until the meat is fork tender, about 30 minutes longer.

Remove the bay leaves. Taste for salt. Transfer the chicken to a serving platter and spoon the contents of the skillet over the meat. Serve hot or warm.

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